Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

Looking through my library and trying to figure out which ones were especially well made. Wind Waker has the thing about sneaking up on pigs, which acts like player training for the stealth mission coming up in Forsaken Fortress, but then you end up never using stealth again... Apart from that sidequest where you sneak up on the eskimo shop girl. Viewtiful Joe's is great but also never teaches you the combo system, which should be a pretty big deal considering it's the only source for decent money.

Particularly bad examples are Dragon Quarter and Baroque, but that's probably just the nature of roguelikes. Godhand was similarly brutal though and it was a beat'em up. "Yeah, you're gonna get dumped into a terrible situation and probably die a dozen times before you even begin to understand; deal with it."

I loved the opening sequence for Batman: Arkham City. Where you're playing as Bruce Wayne rather than Batman, captured and inside Arkham City, beating the crap out of bunch of criminals while escaping capture and then getting a hold of the Batsuit. Pretty awesome. I like games that just throw you right into the action like that.

I quite liked Skyrim's opening too. It gets you up for some dragon action from escaping one right at the beginning. Then I love the way it sets you out into the open world when you complete the first mission, as if the game is telling you, "go nuts and explore buddy"._________________

Resident Evil 1
Bioshock...I knew I was playing something special from the opening level.
Demon's Souls. Very few games have set the stage for what is yet to come than the first "level" of Demon's Souls.
FFX - At the time it was breathtaking and amazing.
Aliens Vs Predator. The one from like 1999. Set such a great, scary, tense atmosphere and captured the essence of the film perfectly._________________

Optimus-Crime wrote:

it's fucking Canada and who wants to live in the badlands but space rebels, pirates and vikings..

Resident Evil was also my first PS1 experience. I was 10 years old and I remember my friends came over for a sleep over. They watched me play until 4am. Yes RE was that good in 1996 that you could get fully immersed just by watching.. The dogs in the beginning scared the shit out of us and we screamed like little girls, or I guess just girls who were our age lol.

It's amazing how today it's one of the cheesiest games yet back then it was seriously terrifying.